Loah drops video for 'Your World', announces limited edition vinyl release

Irish/Sierra Leonean musician Loah has announced the release of a new limited edition vinyl of When I Rise Up and also unveiled a new music video for 'Your World'.

Loah (Sallay Matu Garnett) grew up between Maynooth and West Africa. During the pandemic, Loah returned to her previous vocation as a pharmacist to help on the front line. However, she kept up her cultural contributions throughout, most recently co-presenting the primetime RTÉ show The Heart of Saturday Night with Úna Healy, and appeared in Sally Rooney’s TV adaptation of Conversations with Friends.

When I Rise Up is a carefully curated collection of 1920s poetry set to music, created as a response to the global situation we've found ourselves in throughout the pandemic. Loah has now launched a campaign with Diggers Factory to create a limited edition vinyl release.

Speaking about the vinyl release in a press release, Loah says: "“Our industry is about to change all over again. I feel the wild radical shifts of next stage digital a-coming. I’m here for it, but vinyl is always so special. The feeling and sound of that scratchy needle going on the black wax. Right before the soul waves quietly invade your heart."

For this EP, Loah chose works from poets across Ireland, the US, and Sierra Leone. The seven-track project features works by Langston Hughes, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Gladys Casely-Hayford, Eva Gore Booth, W.B. Yeats, and Katharine Tynan.

Loah chose to use poems from the 1920s as she felt they were "a time of great challenge and change internationally', much like we are dealing with now, and she feels this is deeply reflected in the writing.

"While the poets I've chosen worked and published extensively throughout many decades, I chose to centre the series on works specifically published during the 1920s, with two exceptions. Taking the form of the folk song to bring the poems alive connects the past to the present in this most ancient means of storytelling, and certainly brings them alive for me personally," the musician details.

Additionally, Loah has released a brand new visual for her track 'Your World', directed by Bobby Zithelo.

Speaking about this video, the songstress explains: "“Your World is a dreamy poem by Georgia Douglas Johnson that I adored writing music to in the middle of lockdown, back when all we could do was dream, feel, sleep, repeat. It gave me this feeling of soaring above the world and it's been so gorgeous to actually enjoy real life soaring since! Travelling and seeing family and friends and all the stuff that makes our world worth being in.

We wanted to capture that feeling of finding freedom inside yourself and sailing away on the wings of the imagination! I feel like Bobby captured this so well and all the performers are visions of beauty and grace and feminine freedom! It was an unbelievable amount of good craic getting transformed into these fantastical versions of myself (the creative team were just so fab) and living and moving from the dreamworld. Take me back!”

Pre-order Loah's exclusive vinyl here. Watch the new video for 'Your World' below.